


Undine

by Mother_North



Series: Enchantment [4]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark Fantasy, Drowning, Introspection, M/M, Other, Romanticism, Supernatural Elements, Tragedy, mermaleYuzuru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 10:57:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17897153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mother_North/pseuds/Mother_North
Summary: Piercing shrieks of seagulls were the best of songs for Javier, brimming with beautiful yearning and mournfulness. White sand streaming through his sun-kissed fingers made his thoughts turn to eternity, ever fully realized and understood. He loved the Sea the way he had never loved anything or anyone else in his whole life.





	Undine

**Author's Note:**

> MermaleAU! inspired by Maurice Ravel’s piano suite “Gaspard de la Nuit”, specifically its first piece under the title “Undine”. It is recommended to give it a listen. Link to the piano suite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRnNm_jhEs
> 
> No happy ending in here, guys. Please, consider it before reading.
> 
> RPF disclaimer: this is a work of fiction and it is not meant to offend anyone. It is a product of author’s imagination only. All thoughts, actions and emotions described below have nothing to do with reality.

**

 

Javier throws back his head and sunrays are creeping over his exposed face, the brightness vaguely sensed through his tightly shut eyelids. Spring wind is playing with his hazelnut locks lazily, fresh sea-breeze making him inhale deeper. He senses warmth with each pore of his skin — vibrant and intoxicating.  Pure joy is flooding his chest, other sentiments seemingly nonexistent. Javier imagines the taste of salty drops of seawater on his dry lips; their stingy kisses are making him yearn to get closer to the Sea as soon as he can. He longs to hear the roar of waves crashing against the shore and to sense its fickle mood. He always found Sea inspiring: its steady rhythm and violent storms, when the waves are attacking the dry land with frightening despair, as if aiming to recapture a piece of it for themselves.

The Sea always remained a mystery, its secrets sealed and safely guarded.  At times Javier wanted to give himself to it completely, to let its waters shelter him, to let the waves carry his floating body far; he would open his eyes then and stare into the bottomless blueness of the sky. Javier considered the Sea his true friend. He used to come to the beach regardless of the weather; only there he found internal harmony and peace of soul, there he sucked in deep lungful of air, thinking that the beauty of vast expanse of the Sea is unparalleled.  He often wondered what is there beyond the horizon, what exotic islands and unknown lands are there to be explored; thousands of kilometers of ocean not scaring him enough as a vague plume of smoke of a steamship often made his thoughts travel to the “ _wondrous unknown”_ ; promises of adventures and _new_ _life_ somewhere far away plaguing his everyday monotone existence.

Piercing shrieks of seagulls were the best of songs for Javier, brimming with beautiful yearning and mournfulness. White sand streaming through his sun-kissed fingers made his thoughts turn to eternity, ever fully realized and understood. He loved the Sea the way he had never loved anything or anyone else in his whole life.

Someone once told Javier that the Sea is loved by lonely souls and desperate dreamers, those wanting to find themselves far away, running from their everyday life. Javier couldn’t say the same about himself (such admission had consequences too grave to ever be voiced); he had a home and a family, the ones to wait for his return for supper every single evening.

_What are endlessly whispering sea waves supposed to mean when there is a lively flame cracking merely in a fireplace and children’s laughter is lighting up the whole room with its exuberance and moving sincerity?_

She was holding him close to her breast firmly at night as he was inhaling a cozy aroma of her nut-brown hair, listening to her even heartbeat. It seemed that the gleam of his little daughter’s eyes could outshine the sun and her smile made his chest combust from an overwhelming tenderness. He loved her tiny playful fingers and vibrant laughter so full of life. She used to ask him to bring her something from the town: a crimson ribbon or a mint lollipop.

Javier never forgot to bring her several marine shells from the seashore; he searched for the most exquisite exemplars among all of the stone-pebbled abundance. Her small palms squeezed his ‘gift’ as if it were the most precious thing in the whole wide world and he let her kiss his cheek, feeling deeply moved and fatherly proud.

His life was thoroughly planned, days passing by in unsophisticated joys of a family life and it seemed to Javier that it was more than enough.

Albeit during long nights Javier used to lie in his bed without sleep, listening to the far, barely distinguishable murmur of the Sea, its distant call insistent and inviting. He found himself at the beach the following morning, his own heartbeat matching the rhythm of the waves crashing on the shore. He had to be at the office by nine but he kept on telling: _just five minutes more_ ….

Those _five minutes_ seemed criminally infinitesimal, the whole eternity actually would. Javier couldn’t understand why he kept on hearing _mine mine mine_ in each wistful sigh of the Sea, an endless litany of beckoning.

Javier shook his head smiling to himself, disbelieving and thinking that it was his own imagination playing its elaborate tricks on him.

He walked away then, almost running, without sparing the Sea a single glance, without looking back; he kept on returning though, again and again with a consistency of someone following an accursed ritual day after day.

 

**

 

The morning was humid and overcast, as it has to be in late February. Leaden clouds hovering low over the anthracite surface of the Sea, white-foam crowning incessant waves beating against the shore. Gloomy mood of the Sea filled Javier with a heavy foreboding. The beach was desolate, not a single living soul in sight; the cold wind lashing at him, piercing to the bone marrow. Javier’s long coat was fluttering behind his back in the wind that seemingly was trying to get to his very soul and claim his beating heart, freezing him to sure death.

Javier was sitting on his haunches carefully, not wanting his trousers and boots getting wet; he couldn’t make himself leave as if something unseen was mysteriously holding him down.

_mine… mine… mine…mine_

Over and over echoing in his temples with frightening clarity, the same word ever hypnotizing and corrupting. Javier buried his fingers into the moist dirt-grey sand (it getting beneath his short nails), an involuntarily shiver running down his spine. He was staring intently at the horizon (it looked like it was raining over the Sea in the distance) without realizing what exactly his eyes were aiming to see.

“Why so moody today?” He whispered.

A wave attacked the shore he was standing on with a renewed rage, as if providing him with an answer in that way. It scoffed at his question, at his irrational attempt to speak to it with a hostile cynicism. Javier only smirked in return.

A lonely seagull raised its feathers not too far, eyeing him sullenly. Javier searched his pockets for some bread but to no avail — as ill luck would have it, he forgot to take something to feed the birds on that fateful day. The seagull was seemingly glaring at him with a badly concealed reproach and Javier thought of nothing better than to whisper his barely audible apology:

“I am sorry. I won’t forget next time. I promise…”

It was hard to decipher an answer in the roar of the waves. Javier stood up, sighing wistfully, his compulsory visit to the seashore coming to its end. Suddenly, his gaze caught _something_ in the turbulent foaming waters of the Sea, shimmering obscurely in the heavy surf. Its undistinguishable from afar contours appearing only to be concealed by the water in mere instants.

_Is it a human?_

Javier ran to _it_ without a second thought, his legs taking him there as if on their own accord. Breath was knocked out of his heaving chest as Javier’s mind finally caught up with what his eyes were actually seeing in front of him: _the creature…_ the blackness of his raven hair clinging to his moist deathly-pale skin, morbid cold emanating from it; long willowy limbs and delicate wrists, his incredibly smooth torso and wasp waist; the exquisite curve of his lips (their shade of sickly blue making Javier suppress a shudder) and a _tail_ instead of a pair of legs — nacreous glimmer of white scales in the bubbling seafoam.

 _He_ _was a sight to behold._

Javier’s tongue glued to the roof of his mouth as he couldn’t make himself move a finger, frozen to a spot. Incoherent thoughts were running amok inside his agitated mind and his heart was thumping wildly, shocked numbness spreading over his limbs. Everything seemed nothing but a nightmarish vision and he had to ball his fists (nails digging into his palms sharply, serving as a thread to somehow ground him in reality). Javier struggled to move, to come up to the surface from this delirious dream, a dazed expression on his face.

 _The creature_ inhaled shakily and Javier cried out silently, noticing bright red gills on the glistening skin of its long neck. The roll of the Sea intensified, its mocking laughter filling his ears as if Javier was scorned for his dread and bewilderment, for his stunned stupor. Salt water leaked into his boots but Javier remained oblivious of his surroundings. Gelid water was piercing his feet with a thousand of needles but Javier couldn’t tear his eyes off it… _him_.

_Is he trapped in an extremely realistic hallucination or has he gone directly into one of a childhood fairy-tails?_

Pitch-black eyes ( _a pair of dark diamonds_ ) were staring at him in undiluted horror. _He_ _(it)_ was struggling to crawl away into the waves, his frail-looking arms trembling, refusing to hold his weight.      

_The child of the Sea._

Barely aware of his own actions, Javier closed his fingers around the thin wrist: cold, wet skin… _inhuman._

“Wait! Wait! Who are you..?! _What_ in the hell are you?!”

Perhaps, it is the Sea itself has decided to present Javier with the most precious of its gifts, rewarding him for his unconditional adoration and love through all the years. There is no way he could simply let this creature disappear without a trace as if it has never existed.

Its lips remained sealed but Javier heard a distant voice at the back of his consciousness, a quiet rustling sending ripples through his mind — its timbre _alien_ and _lifeless_ like the stellar scintillation from above.

_“Let me go immediately… or become mine.”_

_Tertium non datur_ _._

Javier wills his fingers to let go but they keep on squeezing the wrist in a deadly grasp. The Sea licked his knees lustfully, its touch burning his flesh; thighs caressed through the now drenched fabric of his trousers by the dance of waves.

 _He_ was luring the man further and further into the waves and Javier found himself unable to resist, letting the vestiges of his rationality drown in the beautiful abyss of his impenetrable irises.

_no need to be afraid… no need to be afraid…no need to be afraid…_

Blood was roaring in his ears and a wave slapped him in the face harshly, salt droplets hanging at his pointy eyelashes. It seemed that his own body didn’t belong to him anymore — the only thing being real was a pair of thin limbs around his neck and extreme cold that paralyzed his whole body. Javier’s hot breath in a small cloud of steam touched the pair of lips which suddenly appeared in a frightening proximity to his face. And the next moment Javier felt their first touch: them sliding against his chin, halting at the corner of his quivering mouth for the briefest of seconds; them continuing their descend to his neck, where a thin vein was beating erratically beneath the sensitive skin.

 _Biting kisses_ were poisoning his very essence, claiming him irreversibly. Javier moaned into the greedy mouth, tasting salt and copper on his tongue. He buried his fingers in the blue-black locks, pulling forcefully and making the mermale’s body tremble against hm.

Their lips tormented each other with feverish abandon: sucking and biting and licking in a vicious caress meant to bruise and subjugate. Javier couldn’t sense a seabed beneath his feet, his body floating in the water freely like a puppet that had its strings severed.

Javier was going through the final moments of his earthly life, yet the thought didn’t scare him at all, seeming insignificant in comparison to what he was feeling while dissolving in this _beautiful_ _creature of the Sea_ without a remnant.

Gelid fingers caressed his wet cheekbones, dug into the back of his head, constantly searching and demanding _more_. Oxygen deprivation caused white spots flash at the back of his eyelids and the violent beating of his struggling-for-survival heart resonated painfully in each cell of his body. Javier slid his hands around the tiny waist, rough scales making his fingertips twitch.

_mine…mine…mine…mine…_

The time itself seemingly stopped and the reality crumbled, giving way to an oneiric vision. Javier felt a mere grain of sand suspended in _the Infinite_ , losing his mind and the sense of body; fragments of his previous life in a kaleidoscopic torrent vivid in front of his inner eye, the life that was once his coming to an end now: the cute dimples on her chubby cheeks, the hold of her little fingers and the melodious laughter of his daughter…

_All was turning into nothing, disappearing and fading away in his moribund consciousness; humanness seeping out a drop after a drop out of his agonizing mind._

He lost his soul and his heart was beating slower with each passing moment. Sea water rushed into his nostrils and ears and Javier couldn’t see the morning light anymore nor hear the shrilly cries of the lonely seagull left ashore. He was submerging further down and somehow it felt absolutely _right_ — to die in _his_ inviting embrace, to stay with _him_ for the rest of eternity in the soothing cradle of the Sea.

 _His_ ghostly-white hands were lulling Javier with the tenderest of touches, their eerie luminescence spreading itself through the water in a morbidly fascinating glow.

To drink from _his_ enticing lips, to fill the cup to the brim, to let himself fade into all-encompassing blackness forever...

A crazed smirk twisted Javier’s lips, his last exhale turning into small bubbles instantly. He was sinking swiftly, his wet clothes a dead weight on his drowning form.

Yet _he_ remained at Javier’s side all of the time as _his_ calming whisper was sounding in the man’s mind like a hypnotizing murmur of the Sea — incessant and overpowering.

And Javier was happy, happier than ever before — until the final beat of his heart, until the final breath he took.

 

**

 

_The Sea beckoned me to you, into your arms of white marble_

_Devoid of warmth and soulless, your skin —_ _a translucent seafoam_

_Descending into your very depths, struggling with despair for a gulp of air_

_You remind me of an echo of a feverish dream or a fragment of delusion_

_You are forever stuck in my doomed enamored heart of a drowned man_

_I breathe not, I see not, I hear not a sound —_ _not needing the world, but_

_For the sinful songs of your enticing body; I am slowly dissolving into you_

_Reaching the high end of low at the seabed of our voluptuous desires…_

 

**


End file.
